Abstract
Recent quantitative and qualitative evidence documents a dramatic reduction in average direct UK household energy consumption in the last decade. The ‘fuel poverty gap’ in the UK (average shortfall that fuel poor households experience in affording their energy bills) has also grown substantially in that period. Here we draw on the literature on vulnerability and on recent qualitative interviews with fuel poor households to characterise the experience of energy vulnerability in the UK. Using our qualitative data, we explore energy vulnerability from the point of view of our interviewees. In doing so we identify six challenges to energy vulnerability for the fuel poor: quality of dwelling fabric, energy costs and supply issues, stability of household income, tenancy relations, social relations within the household and outside, and ill health. In analysing these challenges we find that the energy vulnerable have limited agency to reduce their own vulnerability. Further, current UK policy relating to fuel poverty does not take full account of these challenges. Any attempt to address energy vulnerability coherently in the future must engage with structural forces (policies, markets, and recognition) in order to increase household agency for change.
Highlights
In a recent report on household energy consumption, the Office for National Statistics [1] (ONS) documented a 24% reduction in average household energy consumption in the UK between 2005 and 2011
While household income has long been recognised as a factor in determining fuel poverty [15], the fuel poor in our sample are more concerned about the stability of that income, in the light of recent benefits reform
We argue that qualitative understandings of fuel poverty yield different and revealing insights about the nature of household energy vulnerability in the UK
Summary
In a recent report on household energy consumption, the Office for National Statistics [1] (ONS) documented a 24% reduction in average household energy consumption in the UK between 2005 and 2011 This radical change in energy consumption in the home is likely due to a number of factors, but the doubling of energy prices for households during the period must have had a substantial effect. Few qualitative studies exist that touch on the lived experience of fuel poverty or energy vulnerability [3,4,5,6,7,8,9] These studies show households in the UK and Austria taking increasingly drastic measures to cope with changing circumstances. They document a variety of experiences and responses depending on the circumstances of the household in question. These studies suggest that the experience of fuel poverty is dynamic, and that it can be exacerbated or ameliorated by many factors, from energy efficiency to the social life of the household
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